Insights

Six months after adopting my dog Bruce, I was rubbing his belly when I noticed some raised black spots there. A quick Google search convinced me that there was a very good chance they were melanoma, but as it was a Friday afternoon, I couldn’t get Bruce to the vet until Monday. It was a truly awful couple of days, but I knew I wasn’t the only one worrying about a four-legged friend.

For most people, the thought of a smart device sharing their intimate conversations and sending those recordings along to their acquaintances is the stuff of dystopian nightmares. And for one family in Portland, it’s a nightmare that became all too real when their Amazon Echo sent a recording of a private conversation to a random contact in their phone book.